Substrate by Barycenters
Terms of Service
Last updated 13 August 2026
A one-time $79 reserves your namespace and lets you test your own admission laws in shadow mode — nothing is enforced and no authority is bound. We never hold your signing key. The $79 is credited toward your first subscription invoice at general availability, and you can ask for a full refund any time before you charter your namespace. The formal terms below govern if anything here is unclear.
1.Who we are
The Substrate service and this website are operated by Barycenters Systems LLC, a Delaware limited liability company ("Barycenters", "we", "us"). You can reach us at legal@barycenters.ai. By reserving a namespace or otherwise using the service, you ("you", "your") agree to these Terms.
2.What the service is
Substrate v0 is a deterministic Layer 0 admission runtime: given a proposal, it computes an ACCEPT or REFUSE decision against rules you author, and issues a signed, verifiable receipt of that decision. It is the layer that decides whether a consequential action is allowed to proceed.
The service currently runs in shadow mode (authority_effect = 0). It computes and records decisions, but it does not bind or enforce any real-world authority. Enforcement is never turned on by us on your behalf — it is a deliberate act taken by a named human on your side, once, when you choose. Until then, the substrate observes; it does not act.
3.The Founding reservation
- A one-time $79 payment reserves a namespace — your organization's admission space, claimed like a domain name.
- Names are first-paid-wins. A name already reserved is refused at checkout; it is never silently reassigned. Namespace names are lowercase letters, digits, and hyphens, 3–64 characters.
- The reservation unlocks the ability to author and test your own laws in shadow, in your namespace, immediately.
- At general availability, your $79 is credited against your first subscription invoice. There is no subscription and no monthly charge before general availability.
- At checkout you receive a claim token, shown only once. We store only a cryptographic hash of it and cannot show it to you again. You will need it at general availability to sign the genesis charter for your namespace. Keep it safe — if you lose it, we cannot recover it for you.
4.Your keys, your authority
The authority to bind a boundary is exercised with a steward key that is generated on your own device and never leaves it. Barycenters never receives, holds, or has any ability to use your steward private key. This is a deliberate, load-bearing property of the product: we could not bind a boundary in your name even if compelled to, because we do not hold the key.
The honest consequence: a key we cannot hold is a key we cannot recover. If you are a namespace's sole steward and you lose your key, that namespace may be permanently unrecoverable. You are responsible for safeguarding your key and, where the stakes warrant it, for chartering with a multi-steward quorum so the loss of one key is survivable.
5.Acceptable use
You agree not to use the service to violate any law; to attempt to breach, overload, or subvert the substrate, its receipts, or another party's namespace; to reverse a first-paid-wins reservation you do not hold; or to misrepresent decisions or receipts the service produced. We may suspend access that threatens the integrity of the service or other users.
6.Fees and billing
Today you pay only the one-time $79. At general availability, continued use is a monthly subscription across tiers from Developer to Sovereign; every tier is self-serve and includes all features — you pay for scale, not features. Payments are processed by Stripe; we do not receive or store your full card details. The tier you choose at reservation is the rate you lock for general availability.
7.Refunds and cancellation
Because the reservation is a credit toward a future subscription and nothing is bound in shadow mode, you may request a full refund at any time before you charter your namespace at general availability. See the Refund & Cancellation Policy for details, including what happens if we do not reach general availability.
8.Availability and changes
The service is provided on an as-is, as-available basis while in shadow mode. We may modify, suspend, or withdraw features, tiers, or the Founding offer, and we may experience downtime. We are not a payments, custody, or settlement provider; the substrate governs whether an action is admitted, and never moves money or assets itself.
9.Disclaimers and limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided without warranties of any kind, express or implied. Nothing here is legal, financial, or compliance advice. To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability arising out of or relating to the service is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim.
10.Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms. When we make a material change we will update the date above and, where appropriate, note it on the reservation page. Continued use after a change means you accept the updated Terms.
11.Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules.
12.Contact
Questions about these Terms: legal@barycenters.ai.